


sweet, sweet instigator

by searwrites (sears)



Category: Free!
Genre: M/M, Somewhat established relationship, apartments and street food, domestic AU, hot hot summer, plotless mess, post high school au, some sexual content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-11
Updated: 2015-05-11
Packaged: 2018-03-30 02:38:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3919762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sears/pseuds/searwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I think my face is melting," Ai despairs, pressing both palms to his cheeks, and Momo shifts enough to glance up and see the muddy red tinge to them. It's cute, Momo thinks, with a bitten down grin. Ai's skin has always been too sensitive, he blooms in vibrant color beneath the sun.</p><p>-----</p><p>(or the au nobody asked for, where ai and momo continue living together after high school)</p>
            </blockquote>





	sweet, sweet instigator

"I'm home!" Momo shouts, unnecessarily loud as he pads into their cramped living room. It's meant to be a one person apartment, but Ai is alarmingly good at taking up small amounts of space, always has been, despite the messes he can sometimes leave in his wake.

Which is ironic considering the way he's laid out like a starfish on the ground, a thin, threadbare looking vest pulled up over his chest and a pair of shorts (that were once sweatpants before they were cut) sitting barely inches away from the join of Ai's legs to his hips. He looks a little like he's dying, which Momo can relate to. He's thankful that the elevator works now-- climbing 26 floors in this heat would be actually life threatening.

"I think it's giving up on us," Ai whines pitifully, lifting a heavy looking hand to flick at the rusty flap on their a/c unit, whimpering a little as it sputters loudly. It's mounted to the wall next to the balcony doors, which means it gets about as hot as their searing iron railings do outside. Seems counter-intuitive to its purpose, and maybe this proves his instincts right -- a/c units are not meant to be half outside.

Momo flops down on the ground next to Ai, pillows his sweaty head on Ai's belly and stifles a chuckle or two when Ai grunts beneath the weight of him. He's still small, though lithe and lean, but he's delicate in ways that make Momo sometimes want to wrap him in cotton and sneer at passersby that come too close. Like a pet, he thinks, and then winces. No... that isn't it at all.

"I think my face is melting," Ai despairs, pressing both palms to his cheeks, and Momo shifts enough to glance up and see the muddy red tinge to them. It's cute, Momo thinks, with a bitten down grin. Ai's skin has always been too sensitive, he blooms in vibrant color beneath the sun.

"I can make you an ice bath?" Momo offers-- skeptically, because his only experience with ice baths was when he sprained his ankle and Ai forced him to keep it submerged for 30 minutes at a time. It kind of felt like torture at the time, but it didn't swell, so there's that.

Ai shakes his head, says, "I used the last of the ice to put my laptop on so it wouldn't overheat again."

Momo thinks about getting up to check if Ai made more ice, but he doesn't. He's too lazy to even ask, now that he's down here, surrounded by the radiant warmth of Ai's skin, the gentle fluttering whir of slightly cool air as the a/c unit continues to struggle despite itself. Ai's classes are mostly online now, he spends more of his time in this apartment than Momo does. Momo snatched a job down the street at a grocers, which is sublimely air conditioned at all times, but Ai is sometimes seemingly left to just bake in here alone.

Ai puts his hand on the back of Momo's neck, and while Momo is half expecting a shove, the other half of him that isn't still shivers when Ai strokes down the length of his nape, smoothing away sweaty strands of hair. It's soft, intimate in ways that make the scorching heat seem almost appealing, and Momo finds himself nuzzling his nose into Ai's bare skin, inching closer to his hip. He thinks he would even like the taste of Ai's sweat, which is a weird and scary thing to think outright, so instead he presses his face fully into Ai's belly to blow a wet raspberry against his skin.

Ai shrieks appropriately, wriggling away from Momo as he swats at his head, and then after a moment of panting tussle he has Ai pinned beneath him. The warm pink of his cheeks seems all the more sharp up close. His cheeks are like peaches, Momo thinks, overripe and soft, and Momo grins without thinking and leans down to kiss one of them, exhaling quietly at how hot Ai's skin really is against his lips.

Momo flops away from him then, crawling to his feet as he ruffles his hair to keep it from sticking wetly to his neck again. Ai hasn't moved an inch since Momo kissed him, but it's okay. It's okay because Ai is overheated and desperate for cool air, and it's everything to do with warm lethargy and nothing to do with the sheer, wide-eyed shock on Ai's face. Momo doesn't care-- he has ice to make.

 

* * *

 

They go out at night because it's cooler, while still inexplicably warm and muggy. The sun baked pavement doesn't seem to want to melt the cheap soles of their shoes once the sky turns dark, and it's nice living in the city, it seems to come alive more at night. The vents billow heavy fog, and the air smells thick with smoke from the street vendors and dying car engines that rumble past.

Ai is wearing slightly more modest shorts than his flimsy cotton ones, but Momo wouldn't care either way if he had. Ai can wear whatever he wants, and he does. He's got one of Momo's gym vests on, the ones that always slip down from his shoulders when he isn't paying attention-- or, alternatively, when he's too focused on something to care.

They buy some food and wander, limbs heavy from the heat but light with the knowledge that they can go anywhere here, they'd opted out of campus life, or Momo had. No curfews, no limits. They can just _be_.

Ai buys a small carton of food and feeds Momo these little fried balls of dough that are sweet and sticky. He pierces one with a wooden fork, twists it in the syrup and then lifts it to Momo's lips with a delicately cupped hand to catch the drips below Momo's chin while Momo takes it into his mouth. Momo licks his lips absently as he watches Ai suck on his own fingers to catch the mess he made of his hands, and he knows with all of him what this is-- this boiling heat in his gut, this tug that makes it feel like Ai is tied intricately to the bones in his ribcage-- but at the same time he likes the way things are, doesn't want them to change, so he never gives it a name. It isn't necessary.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes in the dark Momo rolls over onto Ai's futon and snuggles. It's only a one bedroom apartment, so they're crammed into the tiny space as it is, but it's a weak excuse to be close. The thing is, Ai never hesitates or resists, he spreads open like a flower in the spring, warm arms encircling Momo's waist, tracing the ridges of his spine up, and up--

"You're too tall," Ai will mumble, sleepy and fond, his legs tangling up with Momo's beneath the thin sheets.

"You're too short," Momo will whisper back, pressing his face into Ai's neck, breathing him in as he pushes his hips forward blindly, body seeking and mind numb to it.

And sometimes it just _is_. Sometimes a push turns into a roll, sometimes Ai pushes back. Sometimes Momo even falls asleep like this, plastered completely to Ai, and wakes hot and hard and desperate, wriggling against the closest thing to him, which just happens to be a body-- a thigh, a hip, a very petite and cutely formed backside.

Ai is the opposite of selfish, Momo knows, but that isn't what this is. Ai slipping a hand down Momo's boxers with the sides of their faces pressed together, eyes closed, isn't about giving and receiving. Momo panting Ai's name into his ear isn't about a physical exchange, or an expression of emotion. Momo coming into Ai's cupped palm and then laughing when Ai wipes it on his tshirt with a sleepy groan of disgust isn't about _anything_ , it's just a Thing that happens sometimes.

A Thing that grows roots in the cavity of Momo's chest, a comforting truth that feels as good as swimming sometimes does, grounded in nature and elemental in its force. His body is his own, and this kind of blind seeking of pleasure-- the way his stomach gets all fluttery and light after, or the way his nipples get hard and sensitive, so much so that he's forced to discard his messy tshirt altogether-- it's _good_. That's all it ever has to be.

 

* * *

 

Watching Ai cook reminds Momo of his mother, in ways he isn't quite sure how to parse through just yet. It's familiar and comforting, the wet slop of cold noodles onto the chopping board, the delicate way Ai's thin fingers separate stems of herbs and sprinkle seasoning. Everything Ai makes comes with a hint of sweetness-- his curried rice always made with palm sugar and cashews, his soups with tahini and sweet lemon-- and Momo never used to be much of a fan of sugar until Ai came along. Now he finds himself craving it when it isn't readily available. Even meats now require sweet marinades.

Ai dishes up in plastic bowls and folds their paper napkins with precise and delicate ease, and Momo stops leaning onto his palm and watching like a child in wonderous awe, and instead sprints out to the balcony with An Idea. There's a patch of weeds that grow inbetween the bricks out here, and he plucks a few yellow flowers and their accompanying green leaves with a triumphant grin. He leans up over Ai upon returning to the kitchen, bending easily to the curve of his spine, the two of them fitting neatly in such a small and crowded space, to reach their shot glasses. He sets the flower in a glass, and places it in the very center of the table.

He catches Ai staring with a curious look on his face, his hands paused in spreading greens out over the wide base of their bowls.

"It's like a date," Momo says, again without thinking.

Sometimes Ai shuts down like this. His expression shutters until there's nothing there, until his face is impassive and sometimes offensively bored looking. He does it most when Momo gets the most excited about His Ideas and only now is it beginning to make some kind of roundabout sense in his head.

Either way, Ai's noodles taste delicious, slippery and sweet, and Ai's brick-wall facade crumbles when Momo tells him so, with his usual amount of enthusiasm.

 

* * *

 

Ai seems to be drifting further and further from his parents, and Momo can't quite wrap his head around it, so he talks to his brother sometimes, because if anything helps him make sense of things its him.

"Nitori has to prove himself, always has, to his superiors, the adults in his life, to himself," his brother explains with an almost laughable tone of sage wisdom, all while Momo twists the cord of their old, plastic house phone around his finger. He ponders a new looking dent in the a/c unit mounted on the wall, and vaguely realizes it wasn't there the other day. "If you are trying to insinuate that he's using you to do this, you're wrong. Nitori would happily be alone, it's not like he's used to depending on other people."

"I'm not insinuating shit!" Momo yelps, because while he loves his brother and values his opinion, he's defensive and sometimes weak when it comes to the subject of his small, quietly elusive roommate. But like a baby deer that hasn't quite learned how to walk, he's trying, even if he trips up along the way.

His brother makes an oddly timed sound of affection, like a gentle headbutt but somehow through the phone, if that were at all possible.

"Just, get your head out of your ass," his brother says, and it sounds like he's laughing, so Momo frowns. The a/c unit _definitely_ did not have that dent there before. He vows with steadfast resolve to check Ai's knuckles for bruises when he comes home. "Be a support, not a crutch."

Momo still doesn't get it, but he'll try, and try--

There's a piece of the innards to the a/c unit exposed, and Momo gets another Idea. His brother is an engineer, after all.

 

* * *

 

Ai had shrugged with one shoulder at the time, bit his lip as he stared down at the ground and offered, _"You can stay with me, if you want,"_ like it wasn't a big deal, like it was just another check box on a list of options, things Momo hadn't allowed himself to think he could have.

But he _can_ have this. He has it now, and he wouldn't change it for anything.

 

* * *

 

Ai comes home weighed down like a fruit scale with varying degrees of bloated grocery bags, his arms streaked in red where the heavier ones sit dangling from him. He's talking about something in that distracted way he gets when he's exhausted-- his school has a concert, and would Momo like to go? It isn't formal or anything, but maybe if he's bored, or maybe just to see his campus for once, it isn't even _remotely a big deal_ \--

He stops himself, miraculously, when he catches sight of Momo. Momo, who's just about finished with the a/c unit, who is about 90% sure he has a huge smear of black grease on his cheek from dealing with this rusty old control panel. His shirt is off, but it's unnecessary now, because the a/c unit blows icy cold air onto his chest for the first time in months.

Ai must see the way he shivers. He sets the bags slowly down on the ground at his feet. Momo grins, and then declares, "I fixed it!"

Ai moves slowly, the wood floors creaking beneath his feet, and then stands with his palm open against the blast of cold air. He turns to Momo with a look of blatantly confused awe and says, "I didn't know you knew how...", his voice trailing off at the end.

Momo shrugs, smiling with half of his mouth. "Figured it out, took a while though."

Momo knows, logically, his bare chest is cold and probably unpleasant to the touch with the lingering remnants of sweat, but Ai doesn't seem to care as he all but swoons into him, presses his face into the dip between the cavity of his chest and exhales heavily. It sounds kind of like relief, and Momo doesn't completely understand, but he wraps his arms around Ai's shoulders anyway. It's quiet, so much so he worries Ai can hear the thud of his heartbeat, now that the a/c unit has stopped groaning in slow, mechanical death.

Ai is equally quiet, but Momo still hears it when he mumbles shakily, "I don't know what I'm doing."

Momo shrugs, with only one shoulder, in a way he knows means _'maybe this means more to me than I'm willing to admit'_ , something he thinks Ai is already familiar with. He says, "Neither do I," and then lets go with a quiet laugh at the way Ai shivers from the direct blast of frigid air pounding relentlessly against his back. Learning as you go seems much more rewarding, he thinks quietly to himself. A small triumph.

 

* * *

 

The a/c works like a dream now, but sometimes they will still sit laid out on the piles of pillows tossed onto the ground, with the door of the balcony slid open, wafts of humid heat washing over them in thick, cloying waves. Momo will lay on Ai's stomach and Ai will play with his hair while they watch the fuzzy tinge of daytime shows on their almost antique television, and Momo realizes he _likes_ not knowing what he's doing.

If nothing else, he seems to be headed in the direction of something good. It's a quiet road to tread, and he isn't alone, and that feels like it could be enough.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblah](http://searsraes.tumblr.com/)


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